“Best of Broadway has been a UT Dallas tradition since a successful Halloween show in 2007. This year’s performance takes us back to our beginnings. Forty students from the UT Dallas Chamber Singers and Musical Theatre Workshop are participating. It’s a big cast and many students will have a chance to shine,” said Kathryn Evans, head of vocal and choral music at UT Dallas and director of the performance.

The show includes pieces from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, The Addams Family, Jekyll and Hyde, Sweeney Todd and Little Shop of Horrors.

Little Shop of Horrors, based on the 1960’s B-movie, concludes the program for the first time. The story features a large man-eating plant named Audrey II, which can be hard to create on the stage. The Audrey II character is usually performed with puppets that are heavy and require at least two actors to manipulate: one to open and close the mouth and another to move the plant’s tentacles.

Students from the UT Dallas Chamber Singers and Musical Theatre Workshop will perform musical numbers from such broadway shows as The Addams Family.

This year, with the guidance of Arts and Technology (ATEC) professor Dr. Monica Evans and a volunteer animation team from the ATEC program, Audrey II will take the stage digitally.

“The puppets are expensive to build or rent, difficult to manipulate and have a severely limited range of motion and expression. Coupled with the fact that the plant is literally ‘rooted’ to the stage in one spot, this can make Audrey II a very boring character to watch, relying almost completely on her voice actor to bring her to life,” said Monica Evans, who teaches courses in computer game development and game design.

She said they instead created Audrey II by merging animation with game development to incorporate character control and interaction, as well as singing and acting techniques.

“The end result is that Audrey II is performed as if she were a video game character,” she said.

The show is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the art and performance office at [email protected].